The Kite Runner

You Have To Breathe To Scream

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You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creaks. You order your lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW. But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you’re breathing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage is a strangled croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a flood of cold sweat spills, drenches your body. You want to scream. You would if you could. But you have to breathe to scream.

The language in the preceding passage from chapter 10 emphasizes the narrator’s sense of